Platform Briefing — Kubernetes 1.24 'Stargazer' Release
The Kubernetes 1.24 release shipped on May 3, 2022, removing dockershim, promoting gRPC probes and structured logging, and expanding supply-chain protections with signed release artifacts.
Executive briefing: The Kubernetes community published version 1.24 "Stargazer" on . The release removes the deprecated dockershim module, advances observability and extensibility features, and hardens the project’s supply-chain practices.
Key changes for platform teams
- Dockershim removal. CRI-compliant runtimes (containerd, CRI-O) are now required; clusters using Docker Engine must migrate before upgrading.
- gRPC probes GA. Native gRPC health probes reach general availability, simplifying readiness and liveness checks for service meshes and gRPC workloads.
- Structured logging. The structured logging API graduates to beta, enabling consistent log fields for observability pipelines.
- Signed release artifacts. The release process now signs binaries and container images to bolster supply-chain trust.
Implementation guidance
- Runtime validation. Audit nodes for Docker dependencies, updating infrastructure-as-code templates to install containerd or CRI-O.
- Upgrade testing. Run conformance and workload regression tests using staging clusters to catch API removals (PodSecurityPolicy GA removal, FlexVolume deprecations).
- Observability updates. Extend logging pipelines and monitoring dashboards to ingest structured logs and gRPC probe metrics.
Enablement moves
- Brief application teams on changes to PodSecurity defaults and admission controllers.
- Update runbooks and SRE documentation to reflect new runtime dependencies and observability features.
- Adopt the project’s signed artifacts within artifact verification workflows (for example, cosign policies).